No shortage of wind here. Its been a rocky and rolly few days and nights both when sailing or mostly motor sailing between islands and also when trying to find a quiet anchorage out of the swell for the night.
We’ve visited Union Island, Mayreau, Tobago Cays and Canouan in the last few days. All quite different, some massively touristy, some more low key and a bit downtrodden. Dave tells tales of amazing snorkling on the reef at Tobago Cays 12 years ago. The conditions were a bit different this time around with a constant force 6 wind, chop and milky waters. The sun still shone but even getting the outboard onto the dinghy would have proved challenging so we dropped the hook for a two hour lunch stop in the lagoon then headed on to Canouan.
The last few days have emphasised to me that we are definitely living on the boat and it’s our current home. Lots of the ‘honeypot tourist draws’ are crawling with charter boats and inhabited by holiday makers with money in their pockets to burn on over priced meals and rum punches. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that, it’s just our circumstances don’t easily blend with that culture.
Much more our style, we invited a New Zealand couple round for dinner last night. We’d met them in Grenada and they’ve been boat based since 1994. They have amazing photos including some of sailing to South Georgia and around Cape Horn. (Don’t worry, I’m not feeling tempted!)
Cape Horn has a fearsome reputation in the sailing world. The day Phil and Linda rounded, it was so calm, they anchored the boat, Phil got in his dinghy and rowed off to take photos of their boat in front of the famous cliffs. Whacky. They plan to sail to Ireland then Scotland, Iceland, Greenland and in a couple of years head off to do the Northwest Passage as a way of heading back towards New Zealand. Bloody amazing.
Hopefully the winds will go more easterly in the next few days so we can sail rather than motor sail up to Bequai and St Vincent. And that the swell drops off a bit so making progress north is much much easier.
grace of longstone 